Harm not only females: math-gender stereotypes and engagement of engineering students at Russian universities

ABSTRACT

This paper explores the associations between math-gender stereotypes and two dimensions of student engagement – class engagement and disengagement – among Russian engineering students. The data collected in three Russian universities (n = 2,074) were utilised. Structural equation modelling was employed to test hypotheses about relationships between key variables and their variations for male and female subsamples. We revealed that the students’ attribution of math-gender stereotypes to faculty slightly decreased class engagement and increased disengagement for both male and female students. Therefore, we hypothesise that male students can be more overconfident about their future performance in exams on math-related subjects because of a better reputation in the eyes of instructors, which can result in less engagement and, as a consequence, lower academic outcomes. These findings demonstrate the high importance of faculty in encouraging engineering student engagement and providing a bias-free learning environment.

KEYWORDS:

• Math-gender stereotypes
• class engagement
• disengagement
• higher education
• multithreat theory

Acknowledgements

Support from the Basic Research Program of the National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE University) is gratefully acknowledged. The data was collected in the study ‘Monitoring of Student Experience’ of the Consortium ‘Evidence-based digitalization for student success’ (https://en.edtechdata.ru/conso). We express our special gratitude to the coordinators of the universities participating in this study: Tatyana Apollonova (Yaroslavl State Technical University), Yulia Tsofina (Yaroslavl State University named after P.G.Demidov), Ksenia Lyakh (Novosibirsk State Technical University), Ksenia Mertins (Tomsk Polytechnic University), Olesya Shulezhko (Ulyanovsk State Pedagogical University named after I.N. Ulyanov), Kirill Zakharyin (Siberian Federal University), Natalia Zagritsenko (Southern Federal University), Evgeny Ledkov and Nikita Tutykhin (Far Eastern Federal University).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 https://cshe.berkeley.edu/seru.

2 Students were asked to answer the question, ‘During this academic year, how often have you done each of the following?’ with answers on a five-point Likert scale (never, rarely, occasionally, somewhat often, very often). Responses ‘Don’t know’ (7 of 2,074 responses) were recorded as missing values and excluded from the analysis.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Support from the Basic Research Program of the National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE University) is gratefully acknowledged.

Notes on contributors

Natalia Maloshonok

Natalia Maloshonok is a senior research fellow at the Center for Sociology of Higher Education, HSE University in Moscow. She earned the PhD in Sociology in 2014. Her focus lies on student experience at a university, undergraduate and doctoral studies, gender stereotypes in education and Web survey methodology.